locking up guns to keep them away from kids

3 Tips For Constructing A Small Residential Safe Room

Creating a safe room in your home is a major step in improving your safety. Although constructing an entire safe room may not be in your budget or work with the construction of your home, there are ways you can create a smaller version.

Focus On Basics

Since a true safe room would require significant construction and is typically located on the lower level of your home, you may want to fortify existing areas in your home. The best way to achieve an extra level of security is to focus on your bedroom. If you are concerned about a home break-in while you are home, you would most likely be in your bedroom if this occurred. The basic elements you will need are a reinforced bedroom door and reinforced walls surrounding your bedroom. Your bedroom closet or private bathroom inside your bedroom should be reinforced as an extra layer of protection.

A steel door with a deadbolt lock is one option, since it is heavier and harder to penetrate. You should choose materials that are designed to be impact resistant, which includes resistance to bullets. With the use of laminate and paint, the door can be made to blend in with your existing decor. Reinforced doors should have hinges made with longer screws, making it difficult to remove the door off the hinges and to help the door remain in place, even if an intruder were to push or kick the door. The door frame itself and surrounding walls must be reinforced to resist forces, otherwise the door hinges or locks may simply break free from the frame. Even if the door and surrounding walls are not completely impermeable, the idea is the additions would stall an intruder long enough for help to arrive or at least tire them out.

Add Surveillance

You will need several methods of seeing outside the door if you are barricaded inside. The most basic method is installation of a peephole. This is more useful to help you determine if the police have arrived after calling. Since you can only see whether the perpetrator is standing in front of the door or not, you will need additional surveillance methods to see whether they are still inside the house. Your home should have multiple security cameras that cover the inside and outside of your property and the monitors should be inside your safe room. If you choose to use traditional closed-circuit television for security monitoring, make sure the wiring is heavily concealed, since this may be cut if an intruder were to enter.

Ideally, you want to have cameras that are able to wirelessly transmit data to storage devices and the live feed can be accessed through a mobile device. This way, if the cameras are damaged, the data remains saved in a remote location to help with evidence collection. The best way to keep your data safe is to have it continuously stored on a hidden, large-capacity external hard drive or by using a cloud-based storage service.

Have Multiple Communication Devices

Keep both a landline and mobile phone in your safe room, just in case one is not working. Although the wiring may be cut, a landline phone is a useful tool when it is functioning. Since landlines in most localities are connected to your address, police can know your exact location if you are not able to speak. For the mobile phone, keep it on the charger in your safe room at all times and have spare, fully-charged batteries for backup. In an emergency, you may not have the time or even remember to grab your personal device. When you are preparing communication devices for your safe room, make sure all ringers and other features that may cause noise are turned off. If you happen to need your safe room and can sneak in undetected, you do not want to draw attention to yourself.

Creating a small safe room in residential environments requires a significant investment, but it is well worth the effort. Safe rooms not only provide an extra layer of protection against intruders, but can give you added peace of mind. Visit websites like http://arapahoesecurity.com for more information about keeping your home protected.


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